Universal Pictures' Smokin' Aces ends the five-year stretch of time we've gone without seeing anything from intensively creative writer-director Joe Carnahan, who told ComingSoon.net on Thursday that he's now on a roll and has a couple of other projects in the works.

"If things go well, I'm going to do something almost immediately with Reese Witherspoon, which will be a lot of fun and then I do 'White Jazz' at the end of next year with George Clooney," Carnahan said. "My brother adapted it. I got to work with him on it. If this business will have me, I will continue to make films and not wait so long in between."

The film he's referring to with Witherspoon is a remake of Otto Preminger's 1965 movie, Bunny Lake is Missing. The film surrounds the events that occur after a woman reports that her daughter Bunny Lake has gone missing. When police find no evidence that she even existed, they being to question the woman's sanity.

"It sounds almost sacrilegious to say that I think it could have been done a lot better because logically you look at the film in this day and age and there are certain things that didn't add up. Doug Wright who wrote 'Quills' who I adore, loved that and won a Pulitzer, wrote a script and I thought, 'what the hell am I doing? I'm sitting around. I'd like to get into it.'"

He added, "Also what I love about the possibilities of it, it's like coming out of 'Smokin' Aces', it's like getting sent into war with the bazookas and the grenades and the flame thrower, and then going into a movie like this. It's like someone hands you a paperclip and says, 'fight your way out.' So I love that. I think artistically it's a great challenge to do something like that. Whether or not I blow it remains to be seen."

While Carnahan is excited about "Bunny Lake," he's really looking forward to White Jazz, based on the James Ellroy novel, as he is a huge fan of the author's work.

"No one has had a bigger impact on me creatively, certainly writing wise than Ellroy. So to be able to participate in something like 'White Jazz' is extraordinary knowing that something is very dear and near to James. It obvious has legions of fans to those books and trying to honor that and at the same time knowing there are certain things you need to contemporize and certain things that are not sacred."

In fact, he's so into talking about it, that he told us about the style he'll be taking with the thriller.

"The great thing about it is that the script really deposits a complete antihero. George's [Clooney] decision to play a guy who murders an innocent man kind of wontedly and with a great kind of violence 10 minutes into the movie. My approach to it is not going to be like 'L.A. Confidential.'"

Carnahan says that "if you think 'Smokin' Aces' is freaky, I don't know what people are going to make of 'White Jazz' because anyone who has read the book knows that's a whack job of a book. I look at it and go that's f**ked up. I'm not really looking to invoke the movies of the '50s or to shoot it like a period piece. I'm really going to shoot it in a much more fashion like 'Narc.' Movies have this tendency where they kind of shift in time or they take place in the '50s or '60s. There's almost this need to make everything very glamorous. It's just odd to me. Everything becomes very kind of fluid in this really overly reverential way. I don't want to do that with 'White Jazz.' I want to shoot it like an episode of 'Cops' in 1958 just to keep it loose and fluid and overlapping and messy and chaotic would be my approach like the book. Shoot it like the book is written.

On November 30, 2006, it was reported that George Clooney is set to star in a newly green-lighted film adaptation of the novel for Warner Independent Pictures.[5] He is also on board as producer along with his Smoke House partner Grant Heslov. The film, written by screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan and directed by his brother Joe Carnahan, is scheduled for an early 2008 production start date.

The 2007 movie script changes the Armenian Kafesjian family to the Mexican Magdalena family.[6] Carnahan said this of his brother's script, "It’s, to me, what that book always was – the point of departure from the Eisenhower 50s to the psychedelic freakshow, Manson 60s. It’s a total combination of the two with a heavy, heavy voice-over narration, this kind of classic noir."[7] Also, Carnahan has confirmed that the characters of Ed Exley and Dudley Smith will not be in the film version despite their presence in the book.[8] A rival production is making a sequel to L.A. Confidential[9] and asked the director to remove Exley from his screenplay as they own the rights to the character.[10]

In an April 2007 interview, Carnahan describes his vision of White Jazz as reflecting the "kind of mid-century explosion of art and music, and really letting that be the kind of guiding force behind it, as opposed to making it like this ... all 'period suits'. I really want to try to make it as accurate a reflection of L.A. at that moment in time as I can."[11] He also commented on George Clooney's willingness to play an unlikable character for the first time. "He's made that very clear to me: 'I have no other desire than to play what's in that script.' And what's in that script is a pretty despicable guy at times, and pretty nefarious and nasty and selfish."[11] Carnahan also touched upon how he trimmed down the novel's numerous subplots because "I always thought that as much as I love White Jazz, it became almost unfilmable at some point, because there are so many strands, so much, and it became so psychotic ... that's what made it such a great book, but those things would not carry over into the filmic realm, I thought, with ease."[11]

Carnahan has said that he plans to start shooting the movie in December 2007.[12] He has recently stated that the last draft of the screenplay has been finished.[13] Because Regency Productions has prevented Carnahan from using the Exley character, he and his brother have constructed a "doppelganger, giving him all of Exley's traits and speech patterns."[13]

Christian Bale & Javier Bardem confirmed for KILLING PABLOKILLING PABLO is finally moving ahead. The much delayed project about the life of the late Pablo Escobar will be helmed by SMOKIN’ ACES and NARC director Joe Carnahan with filming beginning in June, however the expected strike will probably see the project delayed by a month. Carnahan who will be working on WHITE JAZZ as a pre-strike movie, has wrote the script based on the book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw.

Javier Bardem will play Escobar, the leader of a powerful Columbian drug cartel in the 70’s. After years of violent crimes which made him an astronomically rich man (he was the seventh richest man in the world according to Forbes Magazine in 1989), Escobar was targeted in 1992 by a coalition of Columbian Police and Military, the U.S. Drug Enforcement and the CIA, with the hunt on to bring him down.

Bale will play Major Steve Jacoby, the Delta Force Commander in charge of the hunt for Escobar.

In January, the film which was initially setup at Dreamworks and Paramount in conjunction with The Yari Film Group will have been in development for five full years without a single frame of footage shot. Variety say, Dreamworks and Paramount are no longer involved and it’s just Yari going solo.

This should be stellar stuff. Bale doesn’t pick bad roles and he is easily the most exciting director working these days and Carnahan’s energy and enthusiasm for film compliments his terrific talent. I love movies like this, where the hunt is on for a mob boss or drug boss.

Loved THE DEPARTED. I can’t wait for AMERICAN GANGSTER. Hell, even SMOKIN’ ACES did this kind of thing. These are my movies…. and with Bale, Bardem and Carnahan this should be amazing.

Another little side-note: What is Bale doing between now and June? He has no movie attached to his name? Is he taking the time off, or are Warner Brothers desperately offering him any deal under the sun to star in their JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.

Kids:Rough weekend. I had a bad feeling after they pushed 'Leatherheads' to Aprilbecause of the extensive post on that film that something was going to have to give. Also, George is neck deep in the Coen bros. film at the moment andtrying to do 'Michael Clayton' press which will likely carry over into Awardsseason...SO...they wanted to see about pushing White Jazz back, which I really don't want to do. I've been waiting awhile to make this one and I wasn'tcontent to sit on my hands.Right now, (actually it began on friday) we're in the process of trying to pluga guy into this movie that, if it works, would be pretty f*cking amazing. No, INCREDIBLY f*cking amazing, so we'll see what happens.No tears kids. This is the business. It happens all the time and you've got to have the balls and the ability to push past in spite of these setbacks.We march on. JC